Eyes Wide Open

It was a woman. In a straw sun hat. Wearing coveralls and heavy gardening gloves. She had short dark hair; pinched, mouselike features; and a definite resemblance to the woman I’d seen in the newspaper photo. She stared at Sherwood with a hesitant reserve. “Can I help you?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the detective said. He introduced himself again and held out his badge. “I’m with the coroner’s office in San Luis Obispo. We drove all the way up here… We’d just like a moment of your time.”

“A moment of my time about what?” she asked, squinting.

“Related to an incident that took place down there. A suicide. We just have a few questions we’d like to ask you, if you can give us the time.”

“Ask me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sherwood nodded good-naturedly.

“Am I required?” She looked past him, and her gaze fell on me in the car.

“No,” Sherwood answered, “you’re not required at all. But it’s been a long drive, and it would save us coming all the way back here with something more official…”

Susan Pollack didn’t seem particularly nervous or relaxed. What she seemed was guarded, like someone who didn’t like strangers invading her world. Especially the police.

Finally she shrugged and wiped her arm across her brow. “San Luis Obispo’s a long way. All right, well, you might as well come on in then. I was just in the chicken coop. They’re pretty much my only friends these days. Them and Bo. Not much fun if you don’t like to get your hands dirty. What did you say your name was… Sherwood?”

Sherwood nodded.

She stepped up on the porch. “And you might as well tell your friend, or whoever he is in the car, to come on in too.”

Sherwood waved toward me, and I got out. I nodded hello and followed them in.

“This is Jay Erlich,” Sherwood said.

“You a detective too?” Susan Pollack asked. She had sort of a narrow, birdlike face and barely looked at me.

“No. He’s a doctor. A big-time surgeon, I hear. From New York.”

“I’m from New York,” Susan Pollack said. She wiped her hands. “I went to the Brayley School in the city and had a year at Swarthmore College.” She looked at me. “You haven’t driven up all this way to tell me that I’m sick or something, have you, Dr. Erlich?”

“No. I haven’t,” I said, but didn’t smile.

“Dr. Erlich’s nephew was killed last week in Morro Bay,” Sherwood explained. “He took a fall off the famous rock there in the bay. You ever been to Morro Bay, Ms. Pollack?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I haven’t. There’s lots of places I haven’t been to. You’ve found me here, so you obviously know who I am. I guess you could say I’ve had my travel privileges curtailed the past couple of years.”

She led us into the foyer. Sherwood asked, “Do you mind if we sit down?”

“Be my guest.” She motioned us to a wooden kitchen table. The kitchen had a pleasant, well-taken-care-of feel about it. A rack with lots of copper pots suspended from it hung over a wooden island. An old hand-painted olive basket hanging on the wall. She took off her hat, revealing her short-cropped hair. I tried to determine if this was the face I had seen staring at me that night from the car, but I couldn’t.

She nodded, and Sherwood and I pulled out chairs.

“I had a little money put aside from a trust my father had set up.” She shrugged. “When I got out, I didn’t really have anywhere to go. I couldn’t face going back home. And as you might imagine”-she smiled briefly-“privacy was a selling point of the place. I’d offer you some coffee, but this isn’t taking on the feel of a social visit, is it? Maybe you should just get right down to why you’re here.”

Sherwood nodded. “I asked Dr. Erlich to come along because, as I said, his nephew, Evan, was killed last week, and we’re looking into his death. At first blush it was ruled a suicide. I ruled it a suicide. The kid was in a troubled state mentally and had recently been remanded to Central Coast Medical Center, the psych ward there. A couple of days before his death, the hospital released him to a halfway facility in Morro Bay. A day later he took a walk from the house, and the next morning he was found at the bottom of the rock.”

“Sounds like a poor decision,” Susan Pollack said. “His or the hospital’s.” She turned to me. “How old was your nephew, Dr. Erlich?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one…” She inhaled deeply and rubbed her hand across her brow. “And you say he was troubled?”

I nodded. “Bipolar.”

She nodded, almost sympathetically. “I know something about being twenty-one and troubled. I suppose we both had to pay for it, in our own ways. I’m sorry for your loss.”

I studied her reactions-a tick in her jaw, averting her eyes-trying to measure her sincerity. “Thanks.”

“Nonetheless…” She turned back to Sherwood. “I’d still like to know just what this has to do with me.”

“You say you’ve never been to Morro Bay?” he asked again.

“No, I haven’t. I haven’t left here very much at all since my release. And you still haven’t answered my question.”